Thursday, March 24, 2016

Session Report – Urban Surfin’ – Session 6: Garage Work

[This session happened February 15th. Sin’s player started taking evening classes at this point and has temporarily dropped from the group. That said, our plans required Sin, so he became an NPC for the rest of the run.]PCsBookie – male elf alcoholic hacker, favors whiskey with a whiskey chaserMurdoc – male elf kilt-wearing street mage, at home with the hobosPrometheus – male human street samurai, handy with any firearmThe Fin – female human con artist and gambler from India, by way of Russia, posh and elegantVoid – female human physical adept B&E specialist, a shadow that blends in easily

NPC’dKillroy – male human street samurai, specializes in hand-to-hand combat (and apparently machineguns)Sin – male human rigger, knows exactly the wrong thing to say and says itSaturday, March 14, 2076Bookie used the temporary User ID he created in the Ares system to access the Ares vehicle fleet subsystem. While the R&D subsystem was nearly impenetrable, the vehicle pool was a much easier nut to crack. Bookie searched the vehicle request database, looking for vehicles matching the descriptions supplied by Mr. Johnson being requested on the target date. He found two sets of vehicles match the descriptions Mr. Johnson provided: Set A was checked out from 9:00 AM to 2:00 PM and Set B from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM. Bookie was also able to locate the rigging access codes for the vehicles and quickly copied them to his cyberdeck.The vehicles were currently at the corporate fleet garage in the Bothell neighborhood of Bellevue. After discussing options and possibilities, the group decided Set A was the most likely to be the carrier group for the prototype with Set B carrying technicians to and from the testing range. That said, it might be a ruse, so it would be best to plant a NeuroStun dispenser in both “carry” cars and to leave all of the security vehicles alone. Void and Prometheus went to the garage to scope out the physical security there while Sin and Bookie fabricated A/C parts with remote-trigger NeuroStun dispensers hidden inside.The vehicle pool garage turned out to be a multi-story parking garage with horizontal slats to protect the vehicles from acid rain without totally enclosing the garage. The first floor seemed to be set up for vehicle maintenance with the remaining 7 floors simply parking. The roof had no parking but could be used as a landing pad for helicopters and vectored thrust vehicles. From the top of a nearby building, Prometheus used the telescopic enhancements in his Nikon eyes to carefully scan the roof security, sending the video feed to Void’s Hermes Ikon commlink. Through the video feed Void spotted the motion sensors and cameras that comprised the roof security system and determined there was a small gap in the sensor overlap relatively near the door to the stairs down. She had Prometheus re-scan that area and the additional video confirmed the gap existed. Prometheus stated he could place a grapple at the top of that gap, allowing Void to access the roof via zipline.

Sunday, March 15, 2076Void spent half the day with Sin learning about automobile engines and how to replace A/C components so she can attach the altered components by herself [she spent the day and the Karma necessary to get Rank 1 in Automotive Mechanics]. Prometheus spent the day in the Redmond Barrens practicing the grapple shot on some abandoned buildings.That night, a small team consisting of Void, Prometheus, and Murdoc made their way back to the launching point. Bookie was online and provided access to the security camera feeds from the parking garage to the rest of the team. Murdoc cast invisibility on Void while Prometheus used his grapple gun to attach a line of stealth rope to the garage. Checking the security feed, Void waited until the patrolling guards were on the lowest floors before zipping across to the garage.Once on the roof of the garage, Void deactivated the motion detector covering the door to the stairs down. She next tied off the zipline and retrieved the grapple. She then stepped through the door and started on her way down. Unfortunately, the guard on monitor duty noticed that door open slightly and then close and sent a patrol guard up to check it out. [This was a mistake on our part – we forgot to have Bookie loop the video.] This put a crimp in the plan as Prometheus wanted to leave the zipline in place in case Void needed backup. With a guard on his way up, Prometheus had no choice but to apply the catalyst stick to the zipline to remove the evidence. Bookie warned Void that a guard was on his way up the stairs and Void ducked out of the stairwell to let the guard go by. Once he had, she continued down to the second floor where the first car was parked.The rest of the team monitored the patrol guard who found nothing suspicious and reported an “all-clear” back to the rest of the guards. The guard then continued his rounds, with Void receiving quiet updates as to his position while she swapped out the first car’s A/C component for the doctored one. Once that was done, she used a fold-out template to spray-paint a symbol on the roof with the UV paint. She also planted two RFID transponders on the vehicle. These were mostly distractions to make the security people feel they foiled something. Once Void completed doctoring the first target vehicle, she went up a floor to where the second vehicle was parked and repeated the whole process.Two hours after arriving, with both target vehicles tagged and modified, Void was ready to leave. [The process took some time as she had to pause work whenever a guard patrol was on the floor she where she was working.] Void worked her way back down to the second floor and worked past the weather slats protecting the interior of the parking garage. She safely leapt from that vantage point, across the fence surrounding the garage, to the street beyond. [Physical adepts can leap far!] She then walked to the waiting escape vehicle, where she found Prometheus and Murdoc already inside the vehicle. Prometheus drove the group back to the Pleiades Group office.March 16-18, 2076The team spent the next three days scouting potential routes the target convoy might take from the Ares lab in Everett to the testing ground in Renton, looking for good spots to initiate an ambush.End of Session[Typed up, this was fairly short, but it kept us busy for the evening. Next session we start the actual run, all our planning and preparation in place and ready to face the enemy.][Placing the NeuroStun dispensers in the actual A/C system was something we came up with while talking over the job, looking for potential failure points in our plan. Having Void introduce the NeuroStun via a hole in the roof was the chanciest part of our plan with the highest likelihood of alerting any security inside the vehicle to her presence on the roof. By placing the dispenser inside the A/C with a remote trigger, we no longer needed to worry about any of that.][We actually spend a lot of time planning and talking out modifications to the plan, making sure everyone is involved. Shadowrun has so many moving parts rule-wise it is important that the entire team be involved with the planning so nothing gets missed. I estimate we spend 3-4 hours talking, planning, and gathering information (in character) to every hour of pulling off the job our characters are getting paid to perform. As a result, our success rate is high and everyone has some idea of what to do if/when things go pear-shaped.]

No comments:

Post a Comment

About Me

What This Is About

I'm using this blog to chronicle the campaigns I am either running or playing in and occasionally posting things I'm writing. I started writing a sci-fi novel and journaled that effort. Two drafts are complete, but I'm stalled for a moment, so I'm writing other things for a while until I find my muse for that again.

So for the next while, expect a mixture of original stories and game session reports followed by a campaign chronicle for a superhero game I'm running this year.

Downloads

This is a list of the things I'm sharing from various personal projects. Enjoy!